Config your git repository to use SSH Key

2016-04-17 by terryoy, in tricks

It is very time-consuming typing user and password every time when you do git pull/push to sync your code. Using the rsa ssh key for the authentication will save you a lot of time.

1. Generate SSH Key

Just use the method I mentioned before in this article, you will get a public/private key pair. Upload the public key to your github or other git hosting service.

2. Config your local SSH

Create or open the file ~/.ssh/config for ssh key config. The content will be similar as below:

Host dev
 HostName dev.local
 IdentityFile ~/.ssh/dev_rsa
Host github.com
 HostName github.com
 IdentityFile ~/.ssh/github_rsa

You can use a “host” alias for ssh connect instead of the full host name, this would be convenient if you might switch server host.

3. Choose the correct git url

Usually public git hosting services use HTTPS or GIT protocol, and your private repository can use SSH protocol like in this article.

* Git URL: git@bitbucket.org:<accountname>/<reponame>.git  
* Use with alias: git@bitbucket:<accountname>/<reponame>.git

4. No more ask of the passphrase

Initially if you use a ssh key with passphrase, you might need to enter the passphrase every time you use it. It will be kind of annoying although provide better security. However, sometimes I don't want it to be entered every time in my private trusted computer. So we need ssh-agent to handle that.

# install the openssh-client package if you're on Debian/Ubuntu
$ sudo apt-get install openssh-client

# the ssh-add and ssh-agent tools will be available after the installation, but you need to start ssh-agent in your .bashrc script
$ vi ~/.bashrc
eval $(ssh-agent)

# add the ssh key to ssh-agent (the passphrase will be asked once)
$ cd ~/.ssh
$ ssh-add -k gitub_rsa